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Alua Hotels & Resorts: Alua Hotels Kids Club

Our goal was to create a kids’ club for Alua Hotels, to present its clients with a unique and different family experience based on the values and experience in the company's tourism sector.

Alua Hotels & Resorts

Alua is a young hotel chain with the task of acquiring and managing hotel establishments. With the intention of focusing on the Spanish holiday market, it concentrates its activities in the Balearic and Canary Islands as well as across the Mediterranean coast.

The chain offers a beach holiday which is modern, unique and fun. Creating cosy atmospheres by reforming hotels and repositioning them in the market. They design, in a flexible way, a customised solution for each hotel that differs in each market that it is in.

Aware of the expectations of its customers, Alua works on the innovation and implementation of tools and resources necessary to understand their needs and preferences, implementing the best customer service practices to reinforce their reputation and positioning in the market.

The Challenge

The Solution

Results

The Challenge

In recent years the tourism market has experienced a saturation of the sector, which has also conditioned the consumer experience when it comes to finding your next holiday destination. Customers used to opt for hotels that approached the location where they wanted to spend their rest days and had interesting offers, while today travelers are looking for experiences that add value to their choice for vacations. Therefore, little by little the hotel sector has been transforming the way to sell its offer, from creating more activities for customers in establishments, to changing the way to sell this offer. That is why nowadays they opt for strategies that generate emotions in the clients, that connect the clients with the values of the brand of the hotel.

One of the segmentations in which there is greater competition is the hotel offer for families. The difficulty lies in trying to convince adults that hotel establishments have what it takes to ensure an ideal holiday for both them and the children of the family. The hotels trained to offer family vacations, then, opt for different marketing strategies in order to get their brand to this class of consumers.

The family experience was also at Alua Hotels, specifically in two of its sub-brands, Alua Sun and Alua Village. Alua Sun was focused on a fresh and fun restful experience by the sea and accessible to all family members, while Alua Village was a line dedicated especially to families, with remodeled establishments, rich gastronomy and the application of the latest technologies in their facilities thinking about each member of the family.

Apart from selling the experience of relax, Alua wanted to make their clients get interested in offering a fun and refreshing experience focused on the youngest of the family. Alua was interested in offering fun and innovative activities and that these were the main attractions of the family offer in the sector. And at the same time, Alua wanted to transmit the years of experience in the hotel sector of its founders who had already defined their values during the creation of their brand, and which are undoubtedly a differentiating feature of the chain in the tourism market.

The Solution

To achieve this special connection between families and the Alua brand, we present the proposal of creating a kids’ club, which allows customers to identify in a single-service exclusive activities aimed at younger guests. So that the clients found an attractive association with the kids’ club, we proposed the creation of a physical mascot.

Pets are a frequent strategy in hotel chains and other types of companies, so we bet on a novelty that also acts as a differentiator of Alua Hotels in the hotel sector: create a family of characters applying the characteristics of people of different sexes, and adult age and infantile age, so that the members of the families were reflected in the family of Alua.

Next, we work with the necessary branding elements to create the kids’ club and add this new sub-brand to the main brand of Alua Hotels & Resorts and to the establishments dedicated to family services.

PHASE 1: Creation of Astro Family

For the creation of the Alua family of pets, we consider the intangible values of the hotel chain. The Moon, the night, the stars, are part of the symbols that define the vision of the company of an ideal holiday in the waters of the Mediterranean. That is why, to name this family and relate it to these symbols that are so important for the company's team, we call this family Astro Family. We develop a story to create a universe around the Astro family: they are a family of immortal and funny aliens who millions of years ago came to the Moon, where they built their home, and among their trips through the universe choose the Earth for their vacations , like the worlds of Alua.

At the time of creating the family, the proposal consisted of creating characters with different personalities and representing a family image, so that customers could see themselves reflected in them. For this method we rely on the segmentation of the children's audience, since within the segment of young customers there is another segmentation of more than three groups defined by the activities that Alua Hotels prepared for each one of them. These three groups are the groups of children from 2 to 6 years old, the group from 6 to 12 years old, and the group from 12 to 16 years old. At the time of ascribing their names, we decided to take the idea of the stars, one of the symbols of the Alua team, and we chose to create the names of the characters from the translation of Estrella in different languages.

The members of the Astro Family and their profiles were the following:

STERN / Mr. Astro: Thomas. The father of the family.

STAR / Mrs. Astro: Brenda. The mother.

STJARNA: Danko. The adolescent son, with a more charismatic touch with his cap and his skateboard, represents young people from 12 to 16 years old. It would be the heart of the Astro Family, the main mascot.

STELLA: Lily. The middle daughter, who represents children from 6 to 12 years old. Of its image it emphasizes its float, that symbolizes the summer holidays.

SEREN: Jan. The smallest member of the family, includes the image of children from 2 to 6 years. Not only is he the smallest member, he is also the only member of the family that flies; represents, then, the smallest, and especially those who are children with disabilities, which made him the strongest reference within the Astro Family.

With these diverse profiles, we sought to create that emotional bond of families with the characters of the Astro Family. We work in granting them an image in relation to their personalities, in relation to their concept of alien family, and considering in the graphic aspect the chromatic range of Alua Hotels.

PHASE 2: Creation of the kids’ club

With the aim of granting an identity to the kids’ club that identifies with the clients, we decided to work on a branding strategy to create a unique brand for Astro Family, as well as connect this family experience with the brand of Alua Hotels & Resorts.

Thus, we developed a main logo inspired by the concept of alien family, and also taking into account the main color of the Alua Hotels brand. This logo would have other complementary colors, and in its ornamented version, a background of stars was added, so that the message of the identity of the kids’ club was given more strength. We also prepared the appropriate colors to vary the main logo in case there were limitations in the different applications of the kids’ club that Alua wanted to make.

To end up providing a more defined identity to the club, we assigned a corporate typeface to be applied in all formats of the kids’ club; this typography was "Bryant Alternate".

Given that the application of the brand is fundamental to transmit a solid identity, we prepared a manual of identity and applications, so that the company knew the brand of Astro Family: logo, typography, color range and characters.

Results

After the application of our solution in Alua’s hotels, we agreed with the company to carry out an experiment to check the children's reaction to the Astro Family.

For this study, three members of our team met with two of the animation staff of Alua. In order to carry out the procedure, we order the preparation of each of the Astro Family's components in cardboard and in specific measurements for each character (between 97 cm and 70 cm). We went to the AluaSun Torrenova hotel, in Mallorca, where one of the centers of activity of the kids’ club was concentrated. We managed to gather 12 children - four boys and eight girls - between 3 and 11 years old, and all of them of English nationality, one of the international customer segments of Alua.

Both the members of Amara and those of Alua were placed behind the pen cards, each holding each member of the Astro Family, acting to interact with the young people, to finally sing a song with them. We take care of making an audiovisual report of this experiment in order to capture the reactions of the children.

For this study, three members of our team met with two of the animation staff of Alua. In order to carry out the procedure, we order the preparation of each of the Astro Family's components in cardboard and in specific measurements for each character (between 97 cm and 70 cm). We went to the AluaSun Torrenova hotel, in Mallorca, where one of the centers of activity of the kids’ club was concentrated. We managed to gather 12 children - four boys and eight girls - between 3 and 11 years old, and all of them of English nationality, one of the international customer segments of Alua.

Both the members of Amara and those of Alua were placed behind the pen cards, each holding each member of the Astro Family, acting to interact with the young people, to finally sing a song with them. We take care of making an audiovisual report of this experiment in order to capture the reactions of the children.

The reactions of all of them were positive. They identified themselves with the members of the Astro family and considered them likeable, endearing and original, but with everyday customs such as theirs. We can highlight some of the most characteristic reactions of this experiment:

The children identified with the younger characters. While the children admired the image of STJARNA / Danko for their young image with their cap and skateboard, the girls were reflected in STELLA / Lily. Both groups agreed that SEREN / Jan, the smallest character, was the most fun.

Young people were curious about specific details of the characters. In addition to being surprised with the skateboard of the older child, watching Star / Mrs. Astro paid attention to the flower that he wore on his lapel. In addition, they managed to identify the antennae of the characters as the ears of the aliens.

Asked questions and assumptions about the history and habits of the Astro Family. For example, they talked about the language that the family used to communicate (one of the children said "an alien language"), or the reason that led them to visit the Earth (one of the answers was "for the food"). Reflections that put children in the universe of Astro Family incorporating daily habits.

Little by little the hotel sector has been transforming the way to sell its offer, from creating more activities for customers in establishments, to changing the way to sell this offer. That is why nowadays they opt for strategies that generate emotions in the clients, that connect the clients with the values of the brand of the hotel.

The children asked questions and assumptions about the history and habits of Astro Family. They talked about the language that the family used to communicate or the reason that led them to visit the Earth. Reflections that introduced children fully into the universe of Astro Family, incorporating daily habits.

Implemented services

Branding

Who does not already have a 'logo'? But does your brand transmit your values? To which extent does it do it? Is it aligned with your potential client?